Here is the easiest way, and fastest if your
comfortable about opening the case on your pc.

Open the old pc case and disconnect the hard disk's ribbon
cable from the motherboard or IDE adapter card.

Boot the new computer into CMOS setup.
Change the secondary IDE master to "auto" if it is set to
"not installed".  Save CMOS settings.
Shutdown the new PC.

Open the case and disconnect cdrom ribbon cable from the
secondary ide connector on the motherboard.

Placing both pc cases side to side, connect the old pc
ribbon cable from the hard disk to the new pc motherboard's
secondary ide connector.

Power up the old pc.  Ignore what it does for now, you just
need power to the hard disk.  It will fail to boot with some
beeping, but it doesn't need to boot.

Boot the new pc.  It should come up recognizing the old
hard drive as drive D:, since both disks have active primary
partitions, and the Primary Master IDE drive is always C:
Sometimes the ribbon cable used by pc assemblers are short.
If this is the case, you can pick up longer
ones for $2 to $3. I have one that is over 3 feet in length,
and although IDE cable specs call for maximum lengths, I have
used my extra long one successfully 100% of the time.

Shutdown the new pc first.  Power off the old pc.  Replace
the ribbon cables and close the cases.  Setting the CMOS on
the new pc back to "not installed" for the secondary IDE
if there will be no hard disk on it will speed the boot process
a little, if you want.
tom turak

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Sunday, September 26, 1999 4:02 PM

I will soon be receiving a new Gateway computer running Windows 98 and I
wish to transfer data and graphics files from my old system also running
Windows 98 to the new machine's HD. I wish to continue using the old system
after the transfer. I know that I can transfer the files using a direct
cable connection but what are my other options? A friend told me that I can
remove the old HD, plug the cables of the new system's CD drive into it,
transfer the files, and reinstall the old HD back into the old system. Is
that the easiest and cheapest solution? Thanks for the help.

Larry Scroggs

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